Where did the Mayans come from? Why did they settle in the mountainous regions of Guatemala and the Yucatan Peninsula? What can majestic monuments, pyramids and palaces tell us? What catastrophe led to the destruction of a great civilization just a century later?

The book by Michael Ko, professor of anthropology at Yale University, author of several popular science studies of the civilizations of Mesoamerica, fascinatingly tells about the birth, rise and collapse of the Mayan civilization, whose History has been of great interest to scientists and non-specialists for a century and a half. You will learn a lot of interesting things about the political structure of society, the famous “cities” of the Maya, the achievements of the ancient people in the field of mathematics, writing, astronomy, art, architecture. A special article is devoted to the works of the Russian scientist Yu.V. Knorozov, who made an invaluable contribution to the deciphering of the Mayan writing.

The book is written brightly and excitingly and reveals many unknown pages of the history of the disappeared civilization.